Trends in Cyber Crime: A Look at the First Half of 2014

Conclusion

Overall, much like the discussion around the cost of cyber crime, the answer seems to be not a specific number, but simply more: more cyber crime affecting more businesses along more attack vectors resulting in breaches that are often impacting larger numbers of people. Given this environment, it's increasingly important to understand all the areas of risk facing your organization, including what is happening to others around you. This information, coupled with a comprehensive view of your own networks, allows for more informed decision making.

While security pros need clear insight into their organizations vulnerabilities, internal analysis alone is not enough. Outward examination - such as who is attacking other members of your business sector with what kind of attack and how it is impacting them - is a critical component of an effective cybersecurity approach. Unfortunately, oftentimes, we spend too much time looking at only a small piece of the puzzle.

A new report recently published by SurfWatch Labs, "Trends in Cybercrime: A Social Look at the First Half 2014," aggregates and standardizes cyber crime-related data from the first six months of the year into cyber business intelligence that provides some interesting insights. The standardized cyber data, known as CyberFacts, provide instant understanding of who (Actor) did what to whom (Target), what happened (Effect), and how they did it (Practice). By harnessing the collective power of all this information that exists outside an organization’s walls – from security researcher and infosec blogger discussions to news outlets, social media, vulnerability and security data feeds and more – it’s possible to extrapolate cybersecurity trends across various industries.

Here’s a top-line look at what SurfWatch Labs found in the first half of 2014 for the six most active industries.

Jason Polancich, founder and chief architect, SurfWatch Labs, is a serial entrepreneur focused on solving complex Internet security and cyber-defense problems, with more than 20 years of experience as an intelligence analyst, software engineer, systems architect and corporate executive. Prior to founding SurfWatch Labs, Mr. Polancich co-founded Novii Design, which assisted the U.S. intelligence community and Department of Defense in building some of the largest data warehouse and analysis systems ever put into operation within the government and defense contracting sectors.

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